Valve announces Steam Greenlight, an upcoming program to support small game development, akin to the film Project Greenlight, but hopefully with less Shia LaBeouf. They say "Making the call to publish or not publish a title isn't fun," so we have that to look forward to as of August 30th. Here's word:

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Steam Greenlight, a new platform feature that enlists the community's help in selecting some of the next games to be released on Steam.

Steam Greenlight will allow developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince the Community that their game should be released on Steam. Greenlight piggybacks on Steam Workshop's flexible system that organizes content and lets customers rate and leave feedback.

As well as serving as a clearing house for game submissions, Greenlight will provide an incredible level of added exposure for new games and an opportunity to connect directly with potential customers and fans.

"Making the call to publish or not publish a title isn't fun," said Anna Sweet, at Valve. "Many times opinions vary and our internal jury is hung on a decision. But with the introduction of the Steam Workshop we realized an opportunity to enlist the community's help as we review certain titles and, hopefully, increase the volume and quality of creative submissions."

"Gabe Newell has come out today and said that Valve Software no longer exists. 'Paying bills isn't fun or interesting,' Gabe claimed, 'and we only do what is fun and interesting. So we watched a lot of porn and played a lot of League of Legends, until ultimately our utilities were shut off and the IRS seized our assets. Let's be honest, filing taxes isn't really fun, either."

All that's probably outsourced or on auto bill pay, so no valve employees have to actually do those uninteresting tasks

And who knows, they might have an accountant on the staff who finds it interesting and challenging to try and keep as much money away from the IRS as possible.

"Gabe Newell has come out today and said that Valve Software no longer exists. 'Paying bills isn't fun or interesting,' Gabe claimed, 'and we only do what is fun and interesting. So we watched a lot of porn and played a lot of League of Legends, until ultimately our utilities were shut off and the IRS seized our assets. Let's be honest, filing taxes isn't really fun, either."

*sigh*

C'mon, give me a break. They find creating games interesting, and making money, too, I'm sure. When I bake a cake I know I have to wash the dishes afterward, it's just that I want to sit down and have a piece first. And maybe before I get to them I want to sit down with my son for an hour and work on his reading for an hour, which is still "work" but more interesting and fun than dishes. But I'll get to the dishes later, b/c it's part of the job and b/c my wife is complaining about a messy kitchen. But much of their behavior is explained by their culture, including the lack of HL ep 3. It's really what gets emphasized and what doesn't.

"Gabe Newell has come out today and said that Valve Software no longer exists. 'Paying bills isn't fun or interesting,' Gabe claimed, 'and we only do what is fun and interesting. So we watched a lot of porn and played a lot of League of Legends, until ultimately our utilities were shut off and the IRS seized our assets. Let's be honest, filing taxes isn't really fun, either."

Flat management style doesn't mean everyone just zips around without any organization and that only fun or interesting work gets done at the expense of everything else is the thing people have been saying. When they didn't update Steam for awhile a few years back, I didn't assume they didn't find Steam interesting anymore, I just figured they were working on a big update and that's what happened.

I actually prefer the quiet approach from Valve on their internal projects because they take so long that I would get fed up if they did constant PR/blog/etc updates every week like other companies. It would be great if they could execute on minor iterations instead of doing large, lump sum projects but they've tried that a few times and let's be honest, it didn't work out too well. I think TF2 is the only genuine success they've had there and that was due to the nature of the content.

Anyway getting back on topic, I don't see anything wrong with this sort of community involvement. It might help prevent shit like Bad Rats from getting on the service and promote other deserving games in their place.

Verno wrote on Jul 11, 2012, 09:38:I don't think anyone doubts that Valve operates a bit differently from other companies

I dunno, last time I got into this discussion there were quite a few posts from people who couldn't believe that valve had a flat management style. Of course that was before the employee handbook came out and reconfirmed what valve had been saying all along.

I don't think anyone doubts that Valve operates a bit differently from other companies but most of us don't blame every single problem related to Steam/Valve on that fact. Plus they said that in reference to decision making for projects, not every little daily activity and responsibility that the company has. This game took an extra day to get a patch on Steam, the company has abandoned the Steam platform to go play with Nerf toys! My preload isn't working and the speeds suck, obviously they outsourced everything bwargh! Someone didn't answer my support ticket in 2 hours, oh noes Valve doesn't find it fun!

TheEmissary wrote on Jul 10, 2012, 10:52:Valve is licensing out the source engine for an animated movie called Deep I believe. I remember reading about it before Source Filmmaker beta was announced. http://goo.gl/JmvkK

Back to the main topic, I fail to see why people are so paranoid here. Valve didn't suddenly find the indie gaming scene and have always support them. There is just simply too much for any one to wade through. Microsoft has a similar process for XNA/AppHub indies where they have to be peer reviewed/Tested before they are allowed on the marketplace.

Thats a very interesting link, thanks!

Yeah I don't know wtf is up with all these kickstarter comparisons and accusations. This move has nothing at all to do with funding, which means it has nothing at all to do with crowd funding, which means it has nothing at all to do with kickstarter or its models. And even if it somehow did... so what?I sometimes see posts where its obvious someone doesn't even read the summary, let alone RTFA. But its rare to see so many posts in a single thread exemplifying that.

Valve is just trying to get some help for the first stage of the approval process to get a game onto steam. Ideally the community can filter out some of the crap and they only have to look at the cream of the crop. Voting on games doesn't have anything to do with funding those games.Asking for community help with opinions has been around long before kickstarter existed. It would be more accurate to say that kickstarter "ripped off" the idea from other sources. And I'm happy they did.

Valve is licensing out the source engine for an animated movie called Deep I believe. I remember reading about it before Source Filmmaker beta was announced. http://goo.gl/JmvkK

Back to the main topic, I fail to see why people are so paranoid here. Valve didn't suddenly find the indie gaming scene and have always support them. There is just simply too much for any one to wade through. Microsoft has a similar process for XNA/AppHub indies where they have to be peer reviewed/Tested before they are allowed on the marketplace.

But boy, when they DO find something interesting to work on, it surely can be awesome.Like that source filmmaker. That will at the very least revolutionize machinima.Might something like that even be used in the future for animated feature films?

I don't subscribe to the theory that every little thing I dislike about Valve is explained away by their fun or interest level. You get all weird and pedantic about this stuff Dev, I just find it amusing you're so obsessive about it

Sometimes things just take time. There are many aspects of game distribution that are not fun or interesting but Valve employees do them on a daily basis.

Beamer wrote on Jul 10, 2012, 08:34:Yeah, dev is seriously hung up on what Valve employees may or may not "find interesting."

They've repeatedly talked about that being why they have wheels on their desks so its hardly a secret.

I'll quote the relevant part from the announcement right above:

"Making the call to publish [...] isn't fun," said Anna Sweet, at Valve. [...] we realized an opportunity to enlist the community's help

Valve employees only working on stuff that's interesting to them explains a huge amount of things about valve. Pretty much anything strange or weird about them. I found it amusing they basically admitted in the trailer about the portal 2 level maker that that's why they did it.A few more examples off the top of my head:Why don't they polish up the steam UI? Its still so clunky. They only just now added ability to search friends list. Answer? Not interesting to work on.Why don't they make steam's backend more robust, so they don't have errors and problems in every major sale and release? Answer? Not interesting to work on.Why don't they do at least a small amount of testing and find such embarrassingly obvious bugs I find them in my first playthrough when they port maps in L4D2? Answer? Not interesting to work on.Why do they have valve time? Answer? Because crunch time is not interesting, and neither is feature lock.Why does steam support suck so bad? Answer? Because its boring and uninteresting to valve, so its outsourced.Why does TF2 get so much support? Answer? Hats are interesting.

Dades wrote on Jul 9, 2012, 18:04:An interesting project, crowdsourcing project viability and approval for Steam distribution. I'm not sure publishers will need this kind of thing but it will probably be a big deal for small teams.

Valve isn't making enough on digital distribution, they need a cut of the kickstarter like funds directly as well. They sound more and more like EA every day.

This has nothing to do with crowdsource funding or actually even "Greenlighting" games for development. What this is just a revamped approval process for getting games on to Steam. That is it, nothing sinister there. People in the past frequently criticized Valve for the patchy curation of the steam store, so they are making that process more transparent with some community feedback.

Not yet no. It will down the line I wouldn't doubt. Gabe needs more cheeseburgers.